Atheism vs. God's Existence

[AAA]

Yeah, every engineer who ever lived working together could not do a better job, but YOU have the audacity to say that it is a poor design. People die because the system has degraded. When the DNA mutates, enzymes become misshapen and don't function properly. Then people lose a function and die. It mutates because we live such unhealthy lifestyles. Obesity, poor diet, lack of exercise, the intense number of chemicals in our environment, and many other factors lead to mutations. Are you saying that you want God to literally intervene to fix mutations?

Absolutely I have the audacity to call out a bad design. When the design flaws are the cause of failure, that's bad design. There are a huge number of flaws that would be trivial for an omnipotent designer to have designed better.

I really hate the poor design argument. Are signal transduction pathways poorly designed? Is the ribosome poorly designed? Is the clathrin molecule poorly designed? What about motor proteins? How about the nuclear pore complex? What about ATP synthase? What about the DNA repair enzymes? What about the way that receptors relay a signal? If it were designed, the designer was unbelievably intelligent. [

And again, we are suffering DNA damage because of our lifestyles. Maybe the design wasn't intended to experience the environmental conditions we experience. If I smashed your laptop with a bat, you wouldn't complain that it was poorly designed.

[veoli]

They all share a powerful illusion of design - but like someone else said in the thread earlier, each species fits nicely into their 'niche' because they have been evolving for millions of years to do so.

Well that's the story, but is it true?

That is what the evidence leads us to conclude, yeah.

[AAA]

Funny thing about the ID crowd:  They almost universally posit a Designer that is perfect, then credit it with a sub-optimal creation.  Doesn't really help explain things like AIDS, tooth decay and Harlequin Foetus Syndrome.

On the other hand, if life-as-it-exists is the result of natural selection acting on situationally favourable mutations, we'd expect exactly what we see - organisms that aren't perfect, but suited to their particular environments.  In other words, just good enough to get by.

Boru

NO, those problems that you mentioned are the result of the mutations that are supposed to be your hero. When DNA gets damaged, enzymes may not function properly, and they can lead to the phenotypic problems that you complain about. It's not that it was designed to be that way, it's that it got damaged.

[Crossless2.0]

So, AAA, assuming there is this "unbelievably intelligent" designer behind the cellular processes you mentioned, how does it follow that this designer happens to be the Biblical god you worship -- you know, the deity whose "designs" were scuttled by a single act of human will and who couldn't conceive of a more intelligent and believable means of extending redemption than the barbarism of a blood sacrifice? I call bullshit and special pleading.

Ordinarily, this would be a derail, but you aren't making your case in the biological sciences sub-forum; you're making in the Christianity sub-forum. Does old "iron chariot" Yahweh really strike you, as a character, as the sort of deity you're trying to push here? Be honest.

[Ravenshire]

Absolutely I have the audacity to call out a bad design. When the design flaws are the cause of failure, that's bad design. There are a huge number of flaws that would be trivial for an omnipotent designer to have designed better.

I really hate the poor design argument. Are signal transduction pathways poorly designed? Is the ribosome poorly designed? Is the clathrin molecule poorly designed? What about motor proteins? How about the nuclear pore complex? What about ATP synthase? What about the DNA repair enzymes? What about the way that receptors relay a signal? If it were designed, the designer was unbelievably intelligent. [

And again, we are suffering DNA damage because of our lifestyles. Maybe the design wasn't intended to experience the environmental conditions we experience. If I smashed your laptop with a bat, you wouldn't complain that it was poorly designed.

Straw man much? Who (other than you) has argued DNA damage as evidence of bad design. How about your breathing tube and your eating tube sharing the same plumbing resulting in thousands of deaths every year? How about reproductive organs and wast elimination organs being right next to each other (women) or sharing the same pipe (men). The "design" sucks and the "designer" should be held accountable. All you'll ever do is make excuses.

[Jackalope]

The prostate. There's damning evidence against a competent design.

Go investigate the laryngeal nerve in mammals, particularly the giraffe. It's simultaneously supportive of common descent and an indictment of competent design, and if you can't see that plainly, you're hopelessly biased.

[AAA]

I really hate the poor design argument. Are signal transduction pathways poorly designed? Is the ribosome poorly designed? Is the clathrin molecule poorly designed? What about motor proteins? How about the nuclear pore complex? What about ATP synthase? What about the DNA repair enzymes? What about the way that receptors relay a signal? If it were designed, the designer was unbelievably intelligent. [

And again, we are suffering DNA damage because of our lifestyles. Maybe the design wasn't intended to experience the environmental conditions we experience. If I smashed your laptop with a bat, you wouldn't complain that it was poorly designed.

Straw man much? Who (other than you) has argued DNA damage as evidence of bad design. How about your breathing tube and your eating tube sharing the same plumbing resulting in thousands of deaths every year? How about reproductive organs and wast elimination organs being right next to each other (women) or sharing the same pipe (men). The "design" sucks and the "designer" should be held accountable. All you'll ever do is make excuses.

There's so much going on in the cell that you don't even want to acknowledge. There are control mechanisms that make our electronic circuits rediculously childish. There are layers upon layers of information that are being continuously unpacked, read, and repacked. But you complain that your esophagus is too close to your trachea? You better be thankful that someone just happened to have an epiglottis in order for our species to survive the evolution of that setup.

[AAA]

The prostate.  There's damning evidence against a competent design.

Go investigate the laryngeal nerve in mammals, particularly the giraffe.  It's simultaneously supportive of common descent and an indictment of competent design, and if you can't see that plainly, you're hopelessly biased.

Have you ever dissected a cadaver? In our anatomy and physiology labs we had to memorize and identify all the major nerves in the human cadavers. One thing that you will notice about the nerves is that they continuously branch off. I have never dissected a giraffe, but I'm guessing the laryngeal nerve takes the seemingly strange route because it branches off at specific locations. Many times the nerve branches off close to the target so that communication between the target and the CNS can occur more quickly.

[IATIA]

If I smashed your laptop with a bat, you wouldn't complain that it was poorly designed.

Yes I would. I have a Panasonic ToughBook and it would take more than a bat.

[Silver]

After all this, I have concluded that atheism is real as opposed to god's existence.